Anneli Drummond-Hay

The consummate horsewoman followed up a Badminton win with a stellar showjumping career, and was shortlisted for the Olympics in all three disciplines, writes Martha Terry

- Martha Terry

IT is a phenomenal CV. Imagine if one of today’s top event riders ticked Badminton and Burghley victories off their list and proceeded to turn their talent to the world of international showjumping, racking up dozens of grand prix wins, a European Championship, seven Derbies and the high jump record. Comparisons across the eras may be arbitrary but Anneli Drummond-Hay’s list of achievements is unsurpassed in any generation.

Her aristocratic heritage, her super-horse Merely-A-Monarch and her jet-setting lifestyle among a glamorous elite at a time when only football held sway over showjumping on primetime TV, implies a silver-spoon upbringing. But the true tale of how Anneli became one of the sport’s biggest and most enduring names – the first to secure commercial sponsorship, the only rider ever to be shortlisted for the Olympics in all three disciplines – is far grittier.

Hers is a story of survival, of making the best of both brilliant and ordinary horses, of the necessity of winning sheerly to make ends meet. And now in her ninth decade, she is still enjoying doing just that.

ANNELI was born in 1937, and her childhood was characterised by the privations typical of the 1940s. Although her mother was the daughter of a duke and her father a Scottish nobleman, any family money evaporated, although there remained a “freezing cold Scottish castle without electricity” on her father’s side, and “a fairly grand polo set-up” run by her mother, Lady Margaret.

As war broke out, almost her entire string of polo ponies was requisitioned by the army – bar one named Independenza, who was too old.